Previous reviewers of this film damn it with faint praise if that, but I found it noteworthy as yet another chapter in the Wyatt Earp saga as viewed by Hollywood. The real Earp hung around Hollywood till his death around 1929 and got to know some of the movie makers. Stuart Lake's biography was published in 1931, and Clarence Kelland's TOMBSTONE on which this movie is supposedly based, according to the screen credits, was well known. Well, Hollywood and history are only kissing cousins when it comes to factual matters, and this movie brushes along a lot of truths. But the one thing it does well is the depiction of the legendary gunfight at the OK Corral. The actual fight occurred in a very short space and took a very short time totally unlike the depictions in John Ford's MY DARLING CLEMENTINE and the Burt Lancaster/Kirk Douglas GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL. The depiction here comes closest in the movies to every film and TV version (such as the "You Are There" version) to the actual event as detailed in the many recent histories of Wyatt Earp. It also depicts the murder of Morgan Earp very well since that event occurred soon after the gunfight. As a movie, however, it meanders a lot probably because it tries to tell too many stories at the same time. Earp has to contend not only with unruly cowboys and outlaws but also political corruption at the highest level. The horrendous time waster is spent on Earp's attempt to save a totally fictional person, a young man called Johnny, from a life of crime and to promote the guy's romance with a girl who follows him from Kansas. The antagonist for much of the movie is Curly Bill, played by Edgar Buchanan with much juicy relish, and he has his minions in Ike and Phin Clanton and Indian Charlie, who were real people in Earp's life, but who had no such fates as described in the movie. The shoot out at the end following an abortive robbery of a silver shipment provides an exciting climax, but has no relation to actual events. Sadly, Kent Taylor as Doc Holliday has very little to do to show his acting skills, and Richard Dix as Wyatt Earp is sometimes so low key as to seem he is sleepwalking through a movie he finds boring. Because this film is seldom seen, and has some worthwhile parts to it for western movie fans and for Wyatt Earp fans, I recommend it -- not for its historical accuracy, but for its contribution to myth making.
